A Risky Royal Welcome

By Henry Muller

Beirut's exiles evoke old anxieties in returning to Jordan

"Please, brothers, just one kiss and keep moving." That command, delivered off-camera by an anonymous officer of the Palestine Liberation Organization, could be heard clearly on Jordanian television last week as King Hussein benignly received the embraces, one after another, of 265 P.L.O. guerrillas who had just arrived in his country after a 20-hour trip from Beirut via Cyprus. The guerrillas responded eagerly to their warm welcome, bearing aloft a portrait of Hussein that they had found in one of the rooms at the Mafraq airbase where the homecoming took place. "Long live King Hussein!" the guerrillas cheered resoundingly.

The effusive display of friendship between Hussein and the P.L.O. contrasted sharply with their last encounter. In September 1970 the tough, Bedouin-led troops of King Hussein's army crushed an open challenge to his rule by P.L.O. guerrillas, who had created a state within a state in Jordan, much as they later were to do in Lebanon. At least 2,000 guerrillas were killed, and thousands of civilians died or were made homeless. Some 20,000 Palestinians were forced to flee to Lebanon, where their attacks against Israel eventually led to last June's invasion by Israeli forces and the long crisis of summer.

Today the grim days of attacks by "Black September",; as the attacks by the Jordanians on the P.L.O. have come to be known, are played down by the Jordanian government in Amman. For the time being at least, King Hussein has made his peace with the P.L.O. At a summit meeting of Arab leaders in Rabat, Morocco, in 1974, the King agreed that the P.L.O., not Jordan, would represent the interests of the 720,000 residents of the West Bank, the Jordanian territory that was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Moreover, Hussein had to accept about 2,000 P.L.O. guerrillas in order to sustain his hopes of becoming the leading spokesman for the moderate Arab states. Hussein is confident that he has enough control of the restive factions of his country to permit the return of the guerrillas, who will be housed with their families.

Yet Hussein's decision to welcome back his old enemies clearly is a dangerous gamble. As the head of the Hashemite family, Hussein is part of a minority in his own country; the Palestinians make up some 65% of Jordan's population of 2.3 million. What is more, the presence of the P.L.O. in Jordan in such close proximity to the West Bank raises the threat that the guerrillas will mount terrorist raids on the Israelis and thus provoke an overwhelming counterattack that could be devastating to Hussein's kingdom.

The guerrillas who arrived in Jordan last week found a country that was still seething with rage over the invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis, the siege of Beirut and the military defeat of the P.L.O. The Jordanians did not so much attack the Israelis--they are assumed to be the perennial foes--as the U.S. and the other Arab states. The U.S. was criticized as the ally of the Israelis. Said one knowledgeable Western Western diplomat: "There is no question but that the level of anti-Americanism here has reached an alltime high in many, many levels of Jordanian society."

The feeling of anti-Americanism was especially strong among the well-educated and economically prosperous Palestinians, but all levels of the population were scathingly critical of the other Arab states for not coming to the aid of the P.L.O.

Said Kami Khouri, the U.S.-educated editor of the English-language Jordan Times:

"What has happened proves that the Arab world is totally incapable of dealing with Israel and the U.S."

These frustrations burst out last week at a remarkable gathering at the royal court in Amman, when some 160 prominent professional and religious leaders pelted King Hussein with questions about why Jordan had not broken relations with the U.S. over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. They went so far as to ask why Jordan was not willing to permit democratic institutions to function. The King handled his interrogators skillfully. To identify with, if not coopt, Palestinian rage over events in Lebanon, the King called for the creation of a People's Army, a sort of militia of all Jordanians, both men and women, trained to defend the country. Considering the danger that such an army could turn against its creator, it was a risky proposal.

In public, Jordanian officials express the view that relations between the Bedouin minority and the Palestinians are healthy and mutually beneficial. Says a government of icial: "When you talk about Jordan today, you talk about a well-knit Jordanian-Palestinian economy. If you talk about radicalization, Palestinians would be equally affected [for the worse]."

But, behind the bland expressions of good will, there is a determination not to let the Palestinians ever plunge Jordan into either another civil war or another bout of border fighting with Israel. "The P.L.O. would be welcome [as a fighting force] if there were an Arab strategic fighting plan to face Israel militarily," the same Jordanian official says. "As long as such a strategy does not exist, we will not allow the rise of an armed movement within Jordan. You want to fight Israel? That means men, arms. Set up a strategy, then we are interested. Otherwise, we are not interested."

The P.L.O. fighters in Jordan are equally aware that they need a new strategy. General Abdul Razzak al Yahya, head of the P.L.O. in Jordan, told TIME last week that the P.L.O. would "make changes and reorganize itself internally in accordance with the lessons of Lebanon." Just what that meant remained to be seen, but Yahya was more explicit on one key point: he threatened that the P.L.O. would launch terrorist raids against the Israelis. "Jordan," said Yahya forcefully, "is the bridge for the West Bank." Yet if Jordan allows the P.L.O. to mount terrorist raids, the Israelis could be expected to launch exactly the kinds of retaliatory attacks that the government so rightly fears, threatening the King and initiating the same cycle of internal crackdown that eventually forced the P.L.O. out in the early 1970s.

-- By Henry Muller. Reported by David Aikman/ Amman

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN

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